BA (Hons) Drama, Theatre and Performing Arts Bachelor's degree at the University of Kent

Get ready to challenge yourself and be challenged, as you get to know the raw ingredients of contemporary performance. In this first of three Making Performance modules, you'll experiment with space, text, physical acting and ensemble devising. You'll encounter important practitioners and groundbreaking performances, while also gaining hands-on experience in the foundations of lighting, sound and stagecraft. The skills you'll develop through your first performances this term, along with introduc

Are you passionate about plays? Do you want to learn more about their history, and become confident understanding a variety of play texts? In this module, you'll explore a range of performance texts, from Ancient Greece to the 21st century. Weekly lectures will ground your understanding contextually, and practical workshops will enable you to bring the scripts to life with embodied understanding. This contextual understanding will culminate in two assessments: a historical essay and an in-class

Assessment: Historical essay and in-class presentation

How does performance change the world, and how we see things? How do you make work that understands and engages with its audience? What are your strengths as a performer, writer and theatre maker? What are your responsibilities? By creating and analysing popular, grassroots performances in comedy, live music, storytelling and performance poetry, you'll discover your unique strengths as a performer. You'll learn to become comfortable talking directly to an audience, in your own words and grounded

How do you prepare your body, voice and imagination for performance? This module will help you develop your performance skills by exploring different approaches to working with breath, movement, imagination, and voice, as well as starting to look at playful ways of transforming into character, for example through mask work. You'll develop these skills during practical workshops, learn about the context and background of exercises through accompanying readings and discussion, and reflect on your

How do you create exciting visual theatre? What skills do you need to bring objects and puppets to life? How do you use scenography to tell stories? This module offers a creative exploration of puppetry and object theatre. You'll learn about scenic elements and staging, different types of puppets and objects, and visible or 'invisible' puppeteering. Your lectures and seminars will put puppet and object performances into historical context, while you'll learn the art of performance in practical w

Pursuing a career in the arts not only requires creativity and talent but also an understanding of how the UK arts sector operates. In this module, you'll learn about all aspects of the creative industries and the various career paths that exist for arts graduates. Through tasks and exercises, you'll develop both practical and critical skills, ranging from writing CVs and funding applications to managing your professional portfolio and using social media and networking to boost your career prosp

What do Matilda, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time and Noughts & Crosses have in common? You guessed it: they are all book sources of highly successful stage adaptations. Theatre makers continue to transform canonical stories, such as Romeo and Juliet, the Mahabharata and 1001 Nights, into new plays, musicals, puppet shows and pantomime, while audiences flock to see them. Why are adaptations so popular nowadays? And how exactly do artists create them? By taking this module, you'll di

There isn't just one way to approaches theatre and performance design. You'll explore different styles and methods used to design theatre, while gaining hands-on experience of how to bring a performance to life using the elements of lighting, sound, and scenography. Through lectures you will learn key design principles and how to interpret a performance text from a design point of view, while practical workshops will teach you the fundamentals of handling equipment effectively and safely, and ho

What makes a good actor? Instinct? Imagination? Skills? Explore the theory and practice of Naturalism through key plays of the 20th and 21st centuries, comparing different leading practitioners and culminating in performance. You'll study acting techniques developed by Stanislavski and his successors and learn the basic terms and concepts of mainstream rehearsal-room practice, including Uniting, Actions and Activities, Objectives, Obstacles, Stakes, and Given Circumstances. You'll analyse play t

Musical theatre dance is a melting pot of African, Indian, Caribbean, and Afro-Latin movement, influenced by ballet, modern, and social dance. You'll learn about this history and the key developers of musical theatre and jazz by dancing, as well as by analysing musicals across the 20th century. You'll finish the module with improved dance technique and the ability to learn and perform choreography from different periods, along with a greater understanding of musical theatre and jazz dance's mult

Want to develop your skills in popular performance and become a more versatile performer? Want to find out about the origins of much of today's live entertainment industry, by learning about the politically radical DIY performance scene of Alternative Cabaret? In this module, weekly workshops will introduce you to a range of performance skills including music making, performance poetry, stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and specialty acts, all of which involve learning how to address an audience di